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Topic: my starter is green (Read 1522 times)

I tried to make a 1 1/8 gallon starter with 1 # of DME and 2 slightly expired vials of WLP380 (Hefe). For some reason it all turned out a muddy green. It looks like a back-yard swimming pool a month after it is shut down for the season. I used my copper coil immersion chiller the way I always do: put it into the boil for the last 15 minutes to sanitize. It didn't look like it had any obvious patina, at least I didn' notice anything out of the ordinary. Could the fact that it was in a gallon+ instead of 11 gallons result in a high enough concentration of copper to turn it green (and apparently kill the starter)?

My general rule of thumb for starters is that if it doesn't smell like yeast, toss it. And the green may have me worried enough that I'd toss it just because. If it smells okay, maybe even lacking some yeast character, measure the gravity to see if any fermentation has occurred?

My water is very soft. Maybe slightly high on the sodium being coastal. One of the starters showed signs of activity today. After I got home from work there was just a little foam showing and some visible yeast deposits on the bottom. The other one still is still. I don't plan on using either one at this point. The green scares me a bit. I still have 2 vials of yeast to try a new set of starters. I pick up some more DME on the way home. (...and a couple of packets of Nottingham, just in case). The problem is that one of the vials was miss-delivered and is WLP080 instead of WLP380. Anyone ever used Cream Ale yeast for a wheat beer?

I have seen one green fermentation, when Dan Listermann fermented milk a few years ago. It was a bright lime green, but eventually cleared to nearly colorless. It wasn't infected, but it wasn't good either